


A Kindness, A Curse

by Eva



Category: Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: Introspection, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 22:44:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13511295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: Finn in the aftermath of The Last Jedi.





	A Kindness, A Curse

...

There’s a moment, when Crait fades behind them, when General Organa leans--oh so slightly, her eyes unfocused--on Connix’s shoulder, that the universe tilts.

And Finn realizes.

The Resistance is all of fifteen beings and a single junkyard ship.

He tends to Rose, his throat swollen shut, voice choked into oblivion, because what else is there to do? He’s already made his choice. He doesn’t regret. 

No, he doesn’t regret. Not a second of it.

The Resistance could have been much smaller than even this.

(It could have been greater.)

...

Silence can be a remembrance, and silence can be a kindness.

Silence can be a curse.

A stormtrooper’s helmet isn’t made for communication. Orders are given before the helmet is donned. All sound is meant to trigger obedience to those orders.

You can’t hear pleas for mercy when you can’t hear much at all.

The sounds of Canto Bight--the light! Gleaming from every surface! Finn had been dazzled, is still dazzled, remembering. Understanding more, possibly, than those caught in its snare that sensory input can be a trap. It can distract you. It can hold you, even for a moment, and in that moment, spell your downfall.

The Millenium Falcon is quite possibly the dingiest ship in the galaxy. In all galaxies. Only Chewbacca looks at home.

No, that’s not quite true. General Organa is smiling, faded and distant, her sorrow a somber shade that fits the Falcon better than real joy.

There’s something real, here. Finn meets Rey’s eyes and feels it there, too.

...

He could describe a thousand different ways Kylo Ren deserves to die.

There are, most recently, the hunted and murdered members of their tiny Resistance, patiently stalked into oblivion (and how much of that blood is on his own hands, Finn wonders, though he hides it--and it’s easy, silence is easy, a kindness a curse, when Rey’s eyes are focused some light years away). 

There are the troopers, his own colleagues, if not friends, cowed into obedience, always and only obedience, knowing the price of thinking even a non-First Order-approved thought. Those are heard, they know. Those are tallied up somewhere. Kylo Ren isn’t the only Sith in the universe.

Darkness Rising. They’d heard it, repeated it, until they had believed it. Until they had all but breathed it. The First Order made no pretense to Light. The Jedi were all that was disorder and incompetence--all that was people, ungoverned and undisciplined, running stupid and ragged and criminal--

And Finn looks at the criminals around him, mutineers and destroyers of property and rebellious youth, Poe and Rose and Rey, and he feels something hot and choking and spiky in his throat, something that smothers any breath, something that destroys any words he might have spoken, to direct Rey back here, back now, and--

He hasn’t spoken, yet, about the pain that lingers in his back. About the spells of dizziness, about the weakness that would leave him on his knees, if he weren’t accustomed to such trials, to standing after a day without food and so proving that he deserved to be fed. He won’t speak.

Even though he knows it to be cowardice, he wishes Rose hadn’t saved him.

...

The Dark Side is easy.

The Dark Side is so easy, so seductive. Someone else will issue the orders. Someone else will do the thinking. All you have to do is obey. 

And everything that happens is someone else’s responsibility.

Finn tries. He holds Poe--he holds him, Finn, a stormtrooper, a traitor, self-proclaimed Rebel scum (and how Phasma’s gaze burns in his memory, with recognition, not blame; with pity, not fear). He holds him and he tries to think, tries to find words.

Because Poe, in light speed, has discovered the weight of his actions, and he can no longer stand.

“All I had to do was listen,” he gasps, he weeps, and Finn is broken, useless in this, because if obedience would have saved Poe here, then would it have saved Finn back then? If rebellion isn’t the answer, then what has he done?

“You did what you thought was right,” he croaks, but the tears keep coming. It’s a blessing, a kindness, (a curse), when BB8 is there, when General Organa is there, when Poe is taken from his worthless, useless care. 

But when he looks up, Rey’s eyes are focused, and she is here.

...

Years later, Finn will understand.

He will have resources, he will have time. He will have the support a man needs to delve into himself and to come back, changed, but not lost. Changed, but not broken.

Here, and now, he has only grief.

And the time to feel it.

...

**Author's Note:**

> You know what you did.


End file.
